Five Years of Marriage to Mr. Bradford novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Step

I did not turn around.

Behind me the café door swung shut on Imogen's voice, and the rain came down hard on my bare head.

I walked along the quay with the wallet in my fist.

At the corner I heard a cane on the stones, quick and uneven, and then Leonard's voice, low, saying, "Leave her."

I kept walking.

Fiona's kitchen was empty when I let myself in.

There was a note on the table in her square hand: Gone to my sister's till morning. Eat something. Do not do anything stupid.

I sat down in my wet coat and put the wallet on the table.

I did not open the sleeve.

I did not know what I was afraid of, only that once I looked, it would be real.

At six the light went.

At seven I heard a sound outside, and I went to the window over the sink.

Leonard was kneeling on the front step.

He had come across the road without his coat or the duck umbrella, and he was on both knees on the wet stone with his hands on his thighs and his head down.

He did not knock.

He did not call my name.

He knelt there while the rain soaked him through, and a neighbor walked past with a dog and stared.

I turned the light off in the kitchen so that he would think I had gone upstairs.

I sat in the dark and watched him for two hours.

At nine I opened the door.

"Get up," I said.

"No."

"You're making a show of yourself on a Sunday."

"I know." His teeth were chattering, and his voice was steady. "I'll stay here till you tell me to go or till the tide comes up the street."

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